


And My Heart Beats (so that i can hardly speak)

by DelektorskiChick



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Dancing, F/M, Fluff, I WISH IT WAS LONGER, I made myself sad, Peggy's hospital scene, Steggy - Freeform, so now you have to be sad as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 00:38:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14705822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DelektorskiChick/pseuds/DelektorskiChick
Summary: So I had this image in my head of Steve and Peggy dancing when he comes to visit her in the hospital. And she’s very frail and can’t really stand and-Just read the fic. It's short.





	And My Heart Beats (so that i can hardly speak)

“It’s been so long. So long.”

Steve’s heart was breaking. There was a fifty-fifty shot that Peggy would be like this every time he came to visit her; knowing everything one moment and the next not remembering the past few years.

So he smiled, even though it twisted his guts to do so.

“Well, I couldn’t leave my best girl. Not when she owes me a dance.”

She laughed softly then, a pale shadow of what her bold laughter had once been. Steve glanced at the clock; 7:58 pm.

Late, but the hospital made visiting hours exceptions for him. And her. The staff all loved Peg.

But the time brought a memory to him, one that, thanks to the serum and the ice, hadn’t faded but ran through his mind in bright, livid colors.

_“Eight o’clock on the dot. Don’t you dare be late. Understood?”_

_Ice. Sun. Clouds. Water. He didn’t know which was which anymore._

_“You know, I still don’t know how to dance.”_

_Her voice, over the radio, centering him as he drove Schmidt’s plane down, down towards the sea. Towards the ice._

_“I’ll show you how. Just_ be _there.”_

_Her face. He just wished he could see her face in person one more time. “We’ll have the band play something slow. I’d hate to step on your-”_

Her hand touched his where it balled into a fist on her blankets. Steve looked up, a grin starting to cock one side of his mouth.

“Would you care to dance?”

And the smile that lit her face was all the answer he needed. He reached over, and someone out there had to be watching out for him, because when he flicked on the radio, it was a forties station playing something slow and sweet, similar to what they would play at the end of the night at the dance clubs Bucky used to drag him to.

Steve stood, then gently, _carefully_ , he cradled Peggy in his arms, treating her  _exactly_  like the precious thing she was to him. She laced thin arms around his neck, resting her cheek on his shoulder as his serum-enhanced strength helped him wrap himself around her back and under her knees, making sure to keep her nightgown modestly down. He laid his cheek down softly against the top of her gray head, breathing in her half-forgotten scent as he walked them over to the window where they could watch the skyline as they danced.

Slowly, the station made its transition in songs and Steve felt his heart crumple inside.

 

_Heaven, I’m in heaven,_

_And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak_

_And I seem to find the happiness I seek_

_When we’re out together dancing, cheek to cheek_

 

Peggy’s breaths sighed softly against his chest through the next verse, then picked up the words with the song. Her voice didn't shake at all.

 

“Oh, I love to climb a mountain,

And to reach the highest peak,

But it doesn’t thrill me half as much

As dancing cheek to cheek.”

 

Steve felt his tears begin to gather and roll down his face, dampening the very top of Peggy’s head before he could stop them. He sniffed them back, then lifted his head from hers and pressed a kiss to her forehead. He swayed gently back and forth, not feeling any of the strain of the day, just holding his best girl close and wishing he could turn around and get all those years he should have had with her back.

He didn’t begrudge her her life well lived, not at all. But he fiercely desired the ability to have lived all those years with her, instead of having to forge forward in this new time without her. Without anyone from his time.

He listened to Peggy hum along with the words, soaking in every moment he had with her, even if she wouldn’t remember this come tomorrow.

He would.

The songs rolled into each other after that, flowing from one slow dance into another. Steve didn’t dare put her down; it was just asking for the moment to break. He felt their hearts beat in the same rhythm of the songs, flowing around them and together with them, wrapping them in the warmth of a time they should have had together so many years ago.

He thought he might have heard the door open at one point-probably just a nurse coming to make him leave-but thankfully no one dared to interrupt.

His tears flowed unchecked by the time Peggy looked up at him. She lifted one crepe-paper hand to his cheek, cradling it and wiping the tears away with her thumb.

“See, Steve?” She said, delicately crossing her ankles in midair. “You didn’t step on my toes after all.”

And Steve smiled. That was his girl.

His Peggy.

**Author's Note:**

> The song that makes Steve cry and that Peggy sings (as well as where I got the title of the fic) is Irving Berlin's Cheek to Cheek (the Fred Astaire version, NOT the more popular, fast Frank Sinatra). It was originally recorded in 1935, so it's completely plausible that both Steve and Peggy know and love this song.


End file.
